Mmmmm…. Altoids, come to daddy. Ok it’s day 9, I’m kinda droppin’ the ball here. Truth is it’s really hard for me to concentrate on anything right now. I forgot one key element from when I quit in 2001. Just because you’re past the hump as I put it in an earlier post, does not mean you’re over the withdrawal phase. It means the worst part is over, the part that scares everybody. The part that makes you feel like dying. Oh ya, ok, now I got your attention.
Knowing ones triggers is very important to your success. I think I pointed out some common ones, last time. For instance, getting out of bed, after eating a snack or a meal, with caffeinated products, while driving, resisting the urge to beat the living shit out of your wife’s boyfriend as he passes you in the hallway because you got home before he left. Basic stuff you get the idea. We all have our triggers. Things we do routinely because of something else. And things that set us off, causing stress. Like when I open my mouth, and she starts arguing; according to her all men are created equally, there all wrong. ERRRRRR…. You get the idea.
Knowing what to do? And When? Is mostly a trial and error thing. When a triggering event happens and you feel the urge to put in a dip or light up a cigarette, you must have available a replacement. Up until now I’ve been successfully relying on my Altoids. Some people use hard candy, mints, licorice, gum, or whatever comes to mind. As long as it’s not tobacco. Now at some point you are definitely going to get sick of these things and there will be a point that they don’t do much anyway. Why? Because you’ve moved past needing the tobacco. But you still need to maintain this new lifestyle.
One of the strategies that I stumbled across back in 2001 was visualization. We’ve all heard of visualization, coaches have been training with visualization techniques for decades. Martial Arts instructors have taught students to quiet their minds and focus on a particular outcome. It’s all the same thing. Well, the visualization I’m talking about is a little different. If you will notice at the bottom of the home page there are two pictures that continually change and another area that has links to videos on YouTube. Look real closely and you will see some of the most disgusting morbid photographs ever taken. These are just quick searches through certain photo-bases using specific keywords, but they do the trick.
The coaches and Martial Arts instructors all had positive reinforcement on their minds but I want to break the positive reinforcement left behind after years of using tobacco. Years of feeling pleasure from that big ole dip or drag first thing in the morning. There is only one way to do that and that is to get the brain to associate negative imagery with the act of using tobacco.
I’ve heard of people licking the ashtray just to give themselves a negative sensation to associate with smoking. My suggestion is to utilize these nasty disgusting pictures. Now you might be asking why these pictures? These pictures happen to be the results of chewing or smoking tobacco. Funky growths around the mouth, missing teeth, missing jaws, hacked apart and cut up faces, the dude with his cheek just gone… Mind blowing isn’t it? Well that’s the idea, visual association and over stimulation with images related to the acts of using tobacco. I must go to bed now I have to be up in 3 hours. Good night everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment